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Monday, 12 May 2014

realising a painful past through film

last night had watched the autism film; the black balloon; http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0865297/ for the first time and it was very painful and difficult to watch from the start.
the character in it with autism;'charlie' is pretending to be a severely autistic teenager,was just like him as a child and adult;except was not understood and treated kindly by mum or dad until adulthood because of early wrong diagnosis [the doctors blamed mum and said because there were no signs of solid brain damage it wasnt severe autism nor any other organic condition] and their strict catholic religeon which made them feel the autism was posession by the devil for mum or dad sinning,or something like that.

had had every behavior that 'charlie' shows in the film,and still do;apart from smearing which was one of the behaviors that the intelectual disability hospital managed to wean self off of doing regulary through four months of an extreme/negative form of ABA.

'charlie' is hated by his brother,he is absolutely resented by him,even to the point his brother smashes something supposed to be loved by him [his SNES console],his brother woud try to hide the fact he is 'charlies' brother whenever anyone from his school saw them together,he truly was ashamed of his autistic brother.
this is what really pains self,as it is exactly the same experience of mine growing up with a sister who did exactly the same things as the brother, was resented by her because she felt she coud never bring her friends around into our house,she was so ashamed of her sister she woud denie she had one and woud rip and break things of mine to get back at autistic behaviors.

of course she eventualy started trying to understand when she studied degree level pyschology and there was a unit purely based on classic autism,and over the years we became like friends-like the boys in the film,but it is still very painful to think the existance of mine was resented for so long,including infant and junior school where was beaten by teachers and the head teacher every day for behaviors and difficulties that had no control over,it was a highly confusing and distressing world to be in own world and continuously brought out of it with physical abuse and rough restraint slammed onto tables or into the walls by the teachers,and to be dragged home by the wrist and get even worse treatment off dad.

had really related to the film,and feel its the best film representation of autism have ever seen; at least of the severe spectrum anyway but cant help feeling have lost childhood,not to autism but to the people who shoud have cared for self.